IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA Joint Assembly 2017

“GOOD HOPE for Earth Sciences”

August 27 - September 1, 2017, Cape Town, South Africa

Summary:
The 2017 Joint IAPSO (International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans) – IAMAS (International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences) – IAGA (International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy) Assembly took place in Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) (South Africa) in August 2017. The meeting was endorsed by the South African Department of Science and Technology. It was the one of the biggest meetings for ocean scientists this year. Aims of the Joint Assembly were to share the main results of recent geophysical researches, discuss the most important problems for today and provide the cooperation opportunities for scientists with different research topics. Sessions of the conference covered the wide range of the scientific topics. The program of the conference included the plenary meetings, workshops, inviting lectures, oral presentations and two poster sessions.

Report:
The Joint Assembly activities started on Sunday afternoon with registration and finished on Friday. The welcome session and all other activities were organized by the Local Organising Committee, Cape Town, South Africa. I joined the IAPSO and Joint IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA sessions during the conference time.
The session “Turbulence, internal waves and mixing on all scales” was the most important for me because of topics of lectures that were closely related to my PhD studies. I worked with the session on Monday and Tuesday. There were talks about modeling of internal waves’ field on the first day. On the second day, our work was focused on observational studies of ocean mixing and internal waves. It was the most informative and important day for me. I also attended activities of “General topics in oceanography”, “The meridional overturning circulation: mean state and variability”, “Western Boundary Current system” sessions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Topics of presentations during these sessions were the most interesting and useful. I learned about new features of North Atlantic Circulation and its changes during the last years. I also attended the lecture of Prof. Dr. Monika Rhein (University of Bremen) “Ocean ventilation changes and impact on oxygen and anthropogenic carbon distributions in the North Atlantic” from IAMAS session “Atmospheric chemistry and physics for the 21st century”.
I participated in the poster session on Tuesday, 29.08.17, and presented a poster “Spatial distribution of diapycnal mixing in the North Atlantic from shipboard ADCPs” showing the last results of my work (figure 1). Unfortunately, I’ve got only general feedback for my poster without any specific details about method or results.
There were several advantages for me to participate in conference activities. It was useful for my PhD studies, development and improvement of my current work, for building and expansion of my scientific network.
I discussed scientific problems and my own results during the poster session and met new people that helped me to expand my scientific network.
I found AMOC talks very useful for my PhD studies. The second part of my PhD project is closely related to heat and freshwater fluxes in the North Atlantic. Some estimations of transport, variability of heat and freshwater fluxes from models and observations in the North Atlantic were reported during the AMOC session.
Anyway, it was a very exciting experience for me as a PhD student and young scientist to listen to the lectures of well-known scientists, leaders in their fields (including ocean mixing, internal waves and turbulence topics). I think the exchange of knowledge and experience between scientists is the significant aim of every conference or science meeting.
So, the Joint Assembly 2017 was very interesting for me and very important for my PhD studies. I’d like to thank ArcTrain for the financial support of my travel.

Natalia Sukhikh